IRL 2.0: The Voice Of A Former Warcraft Addict

There are things you do because you want to do them, and there are things you are compelled to do, as Anthony Rosner, former leader of the guild QT Yacht Club, discovered. Being a gamer is still part of his identity, but he's not the hard core raider he used to be, and he turned his experiences into the video IRL. That earned him plaudits and fame, but then a new Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, came out. Up to that point things had followed a pattern: each new expansion had pulled Rosner further in, eating up the hours in his day, costing him in real life. Would the same happen again? Have a look at IRL 2.0, and find out.

"I play on and off," says the man who still kills Kael'thas each week, but he's long since given up the second job that Warcraft had become. He doesn't want guild responsibility, and cites his experience as a guild leader as part of the larger problem. It was the leadership role that really ate Rosner's life; the launch of Burning Crusade, and the prospect of having to abandon his guild to go to university, was what sucked him in the first time. He doesn't play on the same server, and deliberately renamed his character to avoid associations with his old persona. "I I don't even have his name reserved on my old server anymore, so I wanted to just let it go," says Rosner.

There's more to come from Rosner. He wants to look at how gamers are portrayed, and at violence in gaming, but those are projects for the future. Right now he's happy to be a casual Warcraft fan with both feet firmly planted in real life.